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Garmin G1000

Garmin G1000 Panels For FS2004

By Matt Hinchliffe (10 February 2008)

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Garmin G1000 has replaced regular flight instruments in a variety
of aircraft from new flight school Cessnas to home built kit planes
providing 'jet level performance for piston aircraft price'. To
find out more about the system I suggest watching this short
video as to describe the functionality needs an entire article
(or 340 page manual).

Reviewed here are two products now on the market for FS2004
covering the same system so rather than find out which is best I
decided to look at the capabilities of each product and to which
market they suit best.

To test I created a panel based on the Flight1 C172 Skyhawk and equipped three planes
with each system - the Flight1 Skyhawk (a trainer), Robert
Christopher's
Lancair Legacy (sleek tourer) and the FSNordic Tundra wheeled
Maule (bush plane) and travelled over three areas to see how the
systems were useful in each environment. I explored Germany, New
Zealand and Holger Sandmann's
Glacier Bay.

It's important to note here that both planes as default
installation have panel.cfg's for the default C172 and as such if
you want something a little more convincing you're going to have to
crack out Photoshop and Notepad to make your own, I haven't seen
any user created panels out there yet because of course modifying
panel bitmaps for distribution is mostly prohibited.

Both systems look very similar with overlays and options for a
multitude of different displays on each screen to get the
information you want.

As both packages under review here are complex I measured the
RAM footprint and also FPS when compared to the default 172 2D with
target frame rate set to unlimited. Neither system simulates the
GFC 700 autopilot but instead can be slaved to any SDK standard
autopilot with adequate results.

Commercial Level Simulations G1000

With last year's CLS Business Jet/Eclipse 500 we saw some of the
most advanced XML gauges created in the Avidyne system and Nick
Pike has here upgraded his G1000 style gauges from William Ortis'
(Lionheart Creations) Quest Zodiak package to give the simmer
almost every bit of information available. The CLS G1000 also comes with an installer for
users of their BJet/e500 that installs a merge including autopilot
and engine displays suited to fit. Users of the CLS BJet (1.1) will
find gauges won't display in the virtual cockpit as the textures
have been renamed after the re-branding of the package, so a few
seconds are needed in the panel.cfg to sort out that.

First impressions of the CLS G1000 are that some of the numbers
and labels are a little unclear in my panel, I have squashed both
displays onto my 1280 pixel wide monitor whereas in the CLS C172
default installation these gauges are set into right and left seat
panels. If you have a large enough resolution my panel situation
shouldn't be an issue and those with smaller pieces of hardware can
simply stick to the company's suggestion of half and half. The
displays can also be popped up which takes a drain on resources but
gives you time to really study what you're doing.

The system looks good and there are many displays to pop up and
manage giving the immediate feeling of satisfaction wanted from a
complex add-on. Getting round all the screens is a little
intimidating, more so with no documentation - at least so I
thought. Thinking something must have gone wrong I opened up the
installer to find there is a separate option to install the
documentation and gauges to a folder of your choice rather than a
single default installation. In my eagerness I had missed this so
please take note!

The documentation itself is brief providing links to the real
Garmin issue manuals and candidly outlining what the gauges do and
do not do relative to the real world and within sim limits. There
are also a few hints and tips about how to navigate through the
system and a diagram showing click points.

Most importantly there are documents that outline how to install
the gauges in FS aircraft. I found these tutorials were well
written and cover the seemingly complex art of panel configs in an
easy to read style. The manual also covers the simple but vital
points for editing autopilot entries in the aircraft.cfg. The only
point I feel could improve the PDFs would be some formatting, even
different sizes and/or colors for headings just to make it a little
easier to read and navigate.

Using the gauges is a joy, everything needed is on hand in front
of you making the 2D cockpit an easier place to work. Information
on the MFD is highly configurable and it's always easy finding out
exactly where you are and what to expect next. The MFD is mainly a
mash up of the default GPS so don't expect to find any new flight
planning or navigation features but it does also offer a three
level weather report, engine information, basic TCAS traffic page
and a few new display options for the GPS map.

The PFD is where you'll be doing most of your work tuning
frequencies, adjusting values and actually flying the aircraft and
CLS have produced displays that are for the most part clear,
functional and a breeze to use.

I didn't find any show stopping issues while using the G1000
style gauges, but there is one irritation that bugs me - adjusting
values. Normally I like to use the mouse scroll wheel or left and
right clicks but with these gauges I found I could only use the
wheel one way at a time, if I wanted to change a value in the
opposite direction I would have to move the cursor to the other
side of the knob. In my opinion these small left click areas result
in annoying accidents.

Overall the Commercial Level Simulations G1000 gauges are a very
useful and enjoyable addition to the sim hangar. If you're familiar
with editing panel.cfg files or would like to add some complex
glass cockpits to your favorite planes without heaving through
manuals this could be the product for you.

Mindstar G1000

Mindstar are a part of a production group who
produce motion picture software and have now started a flight
simulation department. They are also responsible for many of the
great gauges included with Eaglesoft packages and I don't think it
will be too long until this product is included with an aircraft.
At double the price of the CLS G1000 style gauges, what exactly
makes this set worth $50? Mindstar have set out to make this
product as close to the real system as possible. That means a mass
of custom features that require official Garmin G1000 manuals to
expertly navigate, smooth GDI+ anti-alias vector graphics and
multiple customisable configurations to suit different
aircraft.

From the outset this product shines quality. Watching the system
load up, fully animated is something in itself. You will notice the
clear display and maybe be surprised how well it all performs as it
steals little from resources. Starting up you will certainly be
overwhelmed by the amount of features on offer (unless you are a
real G1000 user) and at least a skim read of the official manual
(downloadable from the Garmin web site) is required to learn the
basic motions and areas of the system. If you have a good grasp of
the default GPS and a certain amount of logic the whole system
becomes usable - this is a credit to Garmin themselves for
producing such an intuitive device. I found myself not using the
large manual much as time with the system seemed to be the best
teacher for me to understand its complex features.

Setting up a flight plan is little different to the default GPS,
but it's a breeze using the mouse scroll wheel and nearest
displayed waypoints or airports (or from a pre-prepared paper
list). You can input safe heights but unfortunately the utility
pages including the scheduler and pilot profile covering license
details to dictate airspace access are not currently modelled and
just there for show - though I can't see a need for most of them in
FS. Flight plans can be saved for later use to copy or invert.

The Traffic Collision Avoidance System (or TCAS) is heavily
simulated and a key feature that really shines with voice and
graphic warnings. Arrows will show direction, where paths may cross
while all being color co-ordinated just as the real thing for ease
of use. If you have your traffic slider set high you will most
likely feel a performance loss that becomes apparent when viewing
the TCAS enabled pages, though of course it can be turned off or
the range decreased.

The project is on going. So far only a few single engine
aircraft are supported but more are in the pipeline including twins
and using the provided software you can edit the numbers to the
aircraft you are flying. The G1000 is easy to install, anyone
familiar with editing configs will have it up in no time. If you
don't, then don't worry - .cfg's and panel editing will be covered
in another article but for now there are many user modifications
available for download on Mindstar's web site. However after owning
this product for 10 months there have been no updates thus far,
though there has been progress regarding Windows Vista.

I found few problems at first. As with anything of this
complexity the user experience will differ depending on your
system. I did suffer two random CTD's, a few flight plan loading
issues where the MFD would freeze and originally some errors when
exiting FS2004. I can safely say these were rare and I have faith
in the team to continue ironing out the irritations. Your .dll
configuration may also have an effect. These problems have now
gone, though I couldn't put my finger on why exactly.

In future if the simulation is further developed to include the
scheduler, weather radar and terrain proximity display then this
would represent amazing value for money for any simmer. In all you
are purchasing a very good, polished representation of a very
complicated piece of kit. If you are training with the real thing
or a simmer seduced easily by technology I can thoroughly recommend
the Mindstar G1000.